me in 10 seconds
Explorer, programmer, netizen, and conversationalist.
(1984-1997): Musician. Berklee grad, played 1000+ shows, guitarist for Ryuichi Sakamoto, wrote and recorded 120+ songs.
(1998-2008): Entrepreneur. Started and sold CD Baby. Paid $83M to musicians.
(2009-2025): Author, speaker. 5 books, 550+ articles, some TED talks, guest on 250+ podcasts.
(2026+): ?
Me in 10 minutes?
See my /about page.
What am I doing now?
See my /now page.
Contact me
I love meeting people, and I reply to every email, so say hello.
newest articles
- Geography is four-dimensional
- Netizen
- I was inconsiderate but now I’m everywhere
- About my book notes
- Offline 23 hours a day
… and more here.
my books
Useful Not True
Doubt everything. No beliefs are true. Adopt what works for you now.
How to Live
My masterpiece. Best thing I’ve ever made. My soul in a book.
Hell Yeah or No
Useful wisdom. Simple profound mental models to guide your decisions.
Your Music and People
Get your work to the world by being creative, considerate, resourceful, and connected.
Anything You Want
40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur. My tales of starting, building, and selling CD Baby.
See the foreign publishers of my translated books.
projects
- Book Notes
- detailed notes from the last 430+ books I’ve read
- Now Now Now
- a collection of sites that have a “what I’m doing now” page
- Tech Independence
- step-by-step instructions to set up your own server and break dependency on the cloud
- Conversations in…
- when I travel, I meet with people who have emailed me
- Inchword
- tools to help people translate books
- Books that reference me
- excerpts from books that have written about me
- MusicThoughts
- inspiring quotes about music, translated into Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Русский, العربية, 日本語, and 中文
- Presentations
- my TED talks and other stage talks
tweets
- Geography is four-dimensional: sive.rs/4d
- 1993 communal internet shaped me: sive.rs/netizen
- I’m not autistic, but my heroes are.
- Since we moved from city to rural land, to a house where the bathroom and kitchen are outside, my boy observed: “This year there are way more full moons.”
- My favorite LLM prompt: “List the top cities in {COUNTRY}, and anthropomorphize each one, listing the good-natured stereotypes and jokes that other people in {COUNTRY} say about people in this city.”
… and more here.
interviews
You can listen to over 250 interviews, where I’m the guest.
Each one has audio, sometimes video, and a full transcript.
photos
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